Munger Mode rating: 2 out of 5 — Sell. Our own rating from the research report below, on business quality first: moat durability and management, with price separating the top three.
Charlie and I have spent our lives looking for businesses that can raise prices without losing customers, that grow without consuming capital, and that would take a competitor a decade and a bloody nose to replicate. Equity Residential is none of these things. It is a well-managed, conservatively financed collection of 85,520 apartment units in America's most affluent coastal cities — an asset-heavy, commodity-product business whose returns on capital are, and always will be, modest. The people running it have been honest and rational, and the founder, the late Sam Zell, was one of the great capital allocators in real estate history. But a wonderful jockey cannot make a plow horse win the Derby. There is also a large piece of news the market is still digesting: on May 20, 2026, EQR agreed to a stock-for-stock "merger of equals" with AvalonBay Communities.
Recent filings analysed: 8-K (2026-08-06), 8-K (2026-07-31), 8-K (2026-07-31), 10-Q (2026-07-30).
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